Provisioning is a process of configuring an operation terminal device to enable the terminal device to provide services. For example, for a Home Gateway (HGW), it is necessary to configure relevant parameters such as the access account, access password, address of a server that provides services, Quality of Service (QoS), firewall, and route. For an Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) Set Top Box (STB), it is necessary to configure an address of an application server, an account and its password, an encryption method, and a key. It is rather difficult for a user to configure such data, and it is costly for a service provider to configure such data manually. Therefore, different organizations have developed automatic provisioning methods. For example, the Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) Forum has developed a Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) Wide Area Network (WAN) Management Protocol, which is abbreviated to CWMP, to implement automatic configuration for home network devices. A User Equipment (UE) downloads configuration parameters from an Auto-Configuration Server (ACS) located in a public network to obtain configuration, and the UE can obtain the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) of the ACS through a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), factory settings, and manual input.
In the process of implementing the present invention, the inventor finds at least the following problems in the prior art: When the URL of the ACS is obtained automatically through DHCP, neither the service provider nor the user needs to input any data into the UE, but the process of obtaining the URL of the ACS is not secure due to the DHCP protocol itself. Therefore, the service provider does not expect the UE to obtain the URL of the ACS automatically through DHCP. If the UE obtains the URL through factory settings, the UE needs to be customized, and is not suitable for retail. If the user inputs the URL of the ACS manually, the input is technically difficult for the user although the amount of input data is small. If the service provider inputs the URL, the service provider needs to bear additional costs and the efficiency is low. Therefore, the provisioning for configuring the terminal device such as an HGW and an IPTV STB is insecure and complicated.